Greggulator

Dragon vs. JJ in a Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl cosplay act is everything I wanted. I know Danielson is pretty much the original indie darling, but he’s at heart the biggest wrestling nerd of us all. JJ does all the bells and whistles for heat. Was it DEAN~ who described Memphis psychology as “I am punching you now?” This is that and I love every second. For some reason Ricky Steamboat is here? This is in North Carolina? This is peak AEW — give me all the weirdness and stuff I grew up watching on late night cable as an insomniac. A figure four and Dragon breaking out of it with a chair? Man, this is the shit. Crazy blood from JJ at the end. Modern day JJ is in three of my top AEW matches — this, vs OC and with Lethal against The Acclaimed. How great would Dragon vs. Lawler or Dragon vs. Terry Funk have been? And Swerve (another weirdo) comes out at the end to steal the thunder? I hope Swerve tortures Yuta and Bryan throws in the towel. This was Perfect pro wrestling. OC/FTR vs. Rush/Roddy/Mortos is also another great AEW fever dream. Dax said on his podcast he was a huge OC fan and drinking buddy. I have been waiting for some kind of pairing with them. Fun match with everything breaking down in full nonsense. AEW rules the mktherfucking world.

Man, that was an absolutely fantastic three hours of professional wrestling. Big ups to Baltimore for being an excellent crowd. Gunther looked so fucking right as the champion. I did not know I wanted to see him vs. Randy Orton but I really do. Man, Damian Priest as a fired up babyface is a revelation. I have always liked him since he came into my life as Punishment Martinez but I thought he would max out as solid muscle guy for a heel stable. He was fired up like early 90s Sting. Rhea is on the short list of biggest stars in the WWE and her and Liv are going to tear the house down now that there’s this clear demarcation line between hero and villain. Their SummerSlam match was really good but served the story with Dirty Dom showing his true colors and now they can actually have their match. All the Judgment Night stuff was so good tonight. A+. Bronson Reed just wrecking Rollins was so good. They have been waiting to pull the trigger on him for a while and now it’s here. Great way to separate Seth from Punk/Drew for a little bit, too. The Wyatt Sicks stuff was so great. The presentation rules. I got a little teary when they came out and when Rowan did the Brodie tribute. Also: Chad Gable should get the biggest flowers possible for his work in their introduction. He and The Creeds — American Made is such a great dopey dickwad name for them — are going to be fine. Gable did yeoman’s work as the lead villain in bringing in a completely new stable. Great Monday.

“I don’t care about your Sabu pants.”

Hoping we get something as good as JJ vs. OC during Orange’s epic run last year with Danielson. No knock on Dragon of course but OC and Jarrett knocked it out of the park with a Memphis brawl in the crowd.

Blood and Guts ruled. It had everything I could want in some chaotic garbage ghoul match — blood, reckless neck bumps, falls from the cage to ladders, unprotected head shots (that really hushed the crowd), the torture of a man with staple guns and it ends with threatened arson resulting in a future shot at the promotions third highest ranking title. Wrestling is the greatest. One million billion stars. AEW rules the motherfucking world.

1) Remember when they had the Blood and Guts match with the Inner Circle and The Pinnacle like three weeks after their feud started? Dax on his podcast dished why — the network was pressuring them to pop a big rating and that was what resulted. Me thinks they want to pop another big rating since they are negotiating and this is what they came up with. 2) I’m excited for this — can’t wait to see Page and Swerve go literal vampire on each other, Darby to further eradicate his future quality of life, The Bucks cowardly avoiding getting their faces raked against the cage before it finally happens, whatever Okada does and Briscoe doing something insane that is impossible to even predict. All In, as they say!

I was sick as hell Monday so did not watch a lot. But I love the whole Sami/Jey pairing and entrance. It serves two really important purposes: 1) It makes Raw look like the most fun thing you could go to live or watch on TV. That’s the whole point. The Attitude Era is awful in terms of degrading content. But the secret behind Raw back then and Nitro was that the shows were fun to go to live and to watch. It wasn’t Sable stripping that made people watch. It was the fun. 2) Pretty sure they’re building to Bloodline vs. Bloodline at War Games, and this is a perfect way to start reminding the audience of the complications between Jey and Sami in The Bloodline because the whole arc is going to be about the challenges of putting the band back together and Sami and Jey trusting Roman and Jimmy before they go after those punks led by Solo. So well done. Also: I’m pretty sure the Liv/Rhea/Dom love triangle stuff is going to end with Finn and Liv being in cahoots this whole time due to Finn’s jealousy of Damien and it’s going to lead to a similar “split of The Judgement Day” war. I can get behind that since The Judgment Day have been the heart and soul of Raw for like two years now. They are kind of like The New Day in how DOA they were when they arrived (even though Rhea is can’t miss no matter what) and now how important they have become. Finn wasn’t doing anything until he schemed his way into taking Edge out. Dom went from being Rey’s scrubby son into one of the best characters around. Damien Priest is the world champ. Rhea is the best. They have also managed to make JD McDonough, R-Truth, Carlito and Liv Morgan important and key players. Great stable that came out of nowhere.

That crowd was so hot for the main event tag match. Cody rules as a babyface and hot tag. KO is an incredible Ricky Morton. They made A Town Down Under look fantastic. The end Bloodline stuff was so good. Good catch by Elvion with KO gouging eyes to make the brawl look nastier than usual and showing hate and resorting to something purely violent to combat these thugs. Jacob Fatu is the absolute best henchman. Bloodline should get all the gold.

Great match. My only issue was the crowd brawl. The “heel storms off” psych works if he’s the champ and wants a countout loss to keep the belt. I get why Will went after him — he wants to win honorably. But MJF doing that didn’t work for me, especially since he did not use it for any advantage and in fact got beaten by a child and head stuck in a garbage can. The end ruled so much though.

Seth handled it well last night by saying mistakes with refs happen all of the time in sports, and you have to accept that. That’s all you need to say.

Damage CTRL vs. KCs/Lyra was really friggin’ good. Great fun cruisers style stuff. Loved Damage CTRL getting the big win only to get ransacked by the Shayna/Zoey/Sonya trio. I am a huge fan of those three and a great pairing together. Sonya never got her due — good character stuff and down low really solid in the ring.

Sami vs. Bron was incredible. That pin was a thing of beauty — Bron had to do some taunting before going to spear Sami, and he got caught. Sami took no chances and immediately went for the pin. Loved the booking for this, too. Bron getting beat this early in his career makes him not have to deal with a big winning streak and how you get out of a guy in a Goldberg steak. But he looks even more awesome as he now goes to eventually dethrone Sami by learning where he erred.

LFG! https://youtu.be/m0aa_JaA-c8?si=yt7KfJkfcBWd7Hgu

Liv/Zelina was so so so so good. Where did that come from? Liv has had good matches when in the ring against the top end of the division. Zelina has had fun moments but I don’t remember her having a full match that was anything above okay. Never expected those two to have an absolute banger that also tied in different story arcs throughout. Bravo to whoever put that all together. Liv absolutely rules in her current form. Stealing the show every week. Sami/Bron was awesome. Can’t wait for that match. The Jey opening was almost as epic as Sami’s iconic entrance in Montreal. It made Raw look like the most fun thing you could possibly see live. Felt borderline out of control in a great way. The Uncle Howdy stuff is just so well done and weird and not like anything else. Falling asleep before I watch the main event but this was a fun few hours of professional wrestling.

I believe Michael Hayes produces every Bloodline segment. Awesome Smackdown bookended by two incredible segments. Great babyface fire at the beginning. KO is just the absolute greatest — playing to the crowd perfectly before flying off through a table like a madman. The final segment was a perfect mugging — they built up to it perfectly over the weeks but it was still so shocking and looked brutal. New Bloodline rules.

Hang in there friend. We are here. I just went through this last week — it’s never a burden to talk to anyone.

Raw fired on all cylinders. The Uncle Howdy stuff is so different than anything else I can remember in wrestling. Bo Dallas ruled and was one of the best portrayed characters of his time. Taylor Rotunda really brought his real emotions and tied it into the story motivation just enough — a perfect balance of real emotion and character. A+ for the weirdo presentation. The Liv stuff is absolutely great. She’s stealing the summer. Great manipulative heel. She’s really hitting the character stuff out of the park. Liv vs. Rhea is going to be a main event PPV feud.

I had to go to a mental hospital for 8 days. Was there over Memorial Day weekend. My bipolar got really hard to manage and I had been struggling for a while. It was a wild 8 days. I am glad I went because I was going down some very dark places unfortunately. But even better — I really learned there what empathy for others really looks like. My first few days there were very scary. I was still completely out of it but when I came to — I was the only person my age who was functioning. People were either talking to delusions or just really zonked on medication. There was one 23-year-old who could have a conversation but that was it. My first night: We were also in our little outside area when there was a major fight in the building next to ours that was filled with really hard looking dudes — a lot of smashing and yelling and they had to evacuate all of the people on that floor to their rear pen while staff fled to whatever was going on. I was afraid it was a planned breakout and was just freaked out. A few other things were jarring. First — multiple homeless people were in the unit. This was not jarring in a bad way, but when do you ever share space with unhoused people? It was also affecting me because I went down the “these people have real problems, what the fuck is wrong with me?” rabbit hole. In PA, if you go to an emergency room and say you’re suicidal, they will find an available bed for you at a psych hospital. A lot of homeless know about this rule and will use it for housing, especially in the winter. It sounds like a loophole (it is) but if you’re homeless you also very likely need psychiatric care and that’s the only way you’re getting it. Another jarring thing: There was this really big guy who is schizophrenic on the floor. He would fight with the voices in his head and because of that would scream obscenities. He was in the room next to me and trying to rest and relax and sleep with someone screaming that all night long was really scary. But then later on, one of the staff members told us he was just a scared 23-year-old kid dealing with this awful disease and felt horrible about how people were scared of him. We started incorporating him more and more into activities and conversations. And over time (and because of the inclusion, partly) he started not having his outbursts. It was really great to see. The wildest stuff came from disruptive patients. Remember what I said before about the ER rule? A lot of addicts know about that rule, but a lot have no intention of trying to get clean. People with addiction are supposed to get into a drug unit but since Philly is the drug capital of the country these are few and far between. People in addiction who are there to get clean are usually very quiet since there is a huge amount of shame involved. But a good amount are there to try and score a dosage and prescription of some kind of benzo (Ativan and klonopin the most popular, especially from meth users.) They intend to be there for as few days as possible and will be as disruptive as they possibly can do a doctor will write them a prescription and send them on their way. One of the rules where I was at was that you had to keep your door shut if you were not in your room. So if you needed to go to the bathroom, you needed to get a floor tech (there are only 2) to open your door. But if someone is busy threatening a nurse or busy using the n-word or hiding a pill under their tongue and lying about it — that takes up all of the oxygen and attention so you have to wait to take a leak until that stops. But it got more comfortable as we progressed. More people were able to talk and it was a lot of really nice people who were dealing with similar stuff like I was — manic episodes lasting a few days where people were so sleep deprived they were having hallucinations (I have come close to that), or people dealing with major life stressors dealing with depression and suicide ideation (yep!) who wanted to become safe. People end up taking care of each other that way — even if someone is delusional or paranoid but really functioning. I will write more about all of this later. But it has been a wild summer for me.

I just rewatched the segment. It was an over 5 minute single camera tracking shot. They are so fucking good at those. The slow pace of the camera and the single piano note and the anonymous bodies and carnage gave it such an awesome horror movie Blair Witch feel. I also love that there is a reason for the lights to turn out and the ominous sound since they hijacked the back area. A+ for the staging and blocking of something that is really hard to pull off.

“Did anyone see my vest?” Truly inspired.

Gable has been awesome. He has had more screen time than pretty much everyone since WrestleMania. The story has a lot of depth and has helped get Otis and Maxine and Tozawa very over. Sooner or later it’s going to end with Gable with The Creeds and Ivy Nile and it’s going to be awesome. Well-paced getting there for SummerSlam or etc. I can easily see Gable stealing the match next week and ending up with the briefcase at the PPV while aligned with the new Team Angle. All of the Bron/Sheamus/Kaiser/Sami stuff was great. Bron vs. Sami is going to be awesome. Bron is a PPV banger away from being the next big thing and who better to guide him to a MOTYC than Sami? The Wyatt’s stuff was awesome. It reminded me a lot of The Nexus debut from way back when. It took place around the same time to set up a giant SummerSlam angle. It was some awesome just seeing a cult like massacre without seeing what happened. They laid out everyone without care. I am the biggest Bray Wyatt and Wyatt Family mark here and this was so cool.

NCAA Softball tournament started this weekend. Was too busy to post an alert ahead of time. NCAA Softball is a blast. Crowds are really fun for whoever hosts the regional. It’s a little bit like women’s hoops from 10 years ago or so where there is not as much parity. The top teams (Oklahoma is looking to four-peat, Texas is the top seed, the rest of the top 10 are usually SEC and Big 12 and PAC-12) ads so much better than the rest of the field. It softball, like baseball, has enough random chaos that it evens out a little bit. The darling of the tournament this year are Southland Conference champs Southeastern Louisiana, who are making their first appearance in school history. They’re a team built on getting on base and then stealing bases. Their coach calls set pieces like a basketball time out play. They best Clemson yesterday to get to the winner’s bracket. Then they gave national power Alabama FITS. 1-0 Tide in the sixth (they only play 7 innings) runners on first and third. They did the play where the runner in first goes to steal second but intentionally falls between the bases. Alabama flubbed how to handle it, so the tying run scored and somehow the girl who fell also ended up safe st second. Lions lost it in extra innings but that game was a thriller.

Nia and Jade came off like an actual fight between high school girls. They just threw each other around pretty rough, followed by some good jawing with security in between. Nia’s taunting with 50 people between then was spot on in how an antagonistic bully instigates in the cafeteria after the adults separated everyone. Nia has gotten so good at her role since she came back. She’s not going to give us any ***** matches. But she gets more heel heat than anyone else not named Dom. She’s also become really solid at being an in-ring heel monster with good timing and making sure she is in the right position.

Nia Jax rules. Her saying “Your mom sucks!!!” right in Jade’s daughter’s face is one of the best heel moments in memory. We all love heels because we wish we could say things like that but adhere to a moral code that makes us act like normal people. Nia does not care. That was a great post-match brawl, too.

Corbin/Carmelo is my sleeper match for Smackdown. My bet is that LA Knight wins the whole thing. I think his character needs a big win just to keep him right on the radar of potential champions. Maybe he could dethrone Logan Paul, but I get why they want to keep the belt on Logan for as long as possible. (Plus, Logan Paul rules.)